The minority thugs in the Rat party have a road map of how to suck off these bailout funds to pay for a great life style for them, their friendly thugs and families.
The Loma Prieta Earthquake happened in the Bay Area in during the World Series of 1989.
It took forever to rebuild the bridge and access routes because the minority thugs swarmed over this honey pot for well over a decade.
It took a few months down in the LA area to repair severe freeway damage after their severe quake. The job was done ahead of schedule and under the bid with real construction people in 84 days.
The Bay Bridge story — safety last
Debra J. Saunders
Friday, August 27, 2004
IN 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake left a hole in the Bay Bridge. While the state got the bridge working within a month, engineers needed time to study how best to make the bridge safe before the next big quake. Fifteen years later, it still isn’t safe — thanks to pols who put pork and political correctness before safety.
In 1991, U.S.-led forces devastated Iraq’s infrastructure in the Persian Gulf War. By 1992, every bridge spanning the Tigris River was in service.
In 1994, the Northridge earthquake destroyed two freeway bridges. Southern Californians wanted their freeways running, pronto. Gov. Pete Wilson made sure they were functional within 84 days.
Meanwhile, back in the Bay Area, it took 13 years before the state began reconstruction of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. The delay was, in part, due to the time it took for Caltrans to determine that it made more sense to build a new span than retrofit the old one and, in part, due to squabbles over who would pay for it.
In 1997, when then-Gov. Pete Wilson signed a measure pushed by state Sen. Quentin Kopp authorizing the new span, the projected cost was $1.3 billion. The new bridge was supposed to be completed in 2004 — this year.
Enter Willie Brown, then Da Mayor of San Francisco, who held up the project by withholding title to land on Treasure Island, the meeting point of the bridge’s western and eastern spans.
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown joined the stalling game, demanding that the new span design be tony enough for Oakland.
In 1998, the Mayors Brown, along with then-Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean, backed local advisory ballot measures calling for the state to consider running a transit line on the Bay Bridge — as if it made sense to eliminate traffic lanes on a gridlocked bridge.
“We’re saying ‘time out,’ we don’t need to rush,” explained the patient Dean.
Rush? Insert bitter laugh here.
Ever since 1997, if there was been a politically correct idea — a new design, another study, a $50 million-bike lane that would not go all the way to the city — that promised to drive up the cost of the bridge, local politicians embraced it.
Lo and behold, in 2001, the cost was up to $2.6 billion.
Now it is $5.1 billion.
No wonder Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is demanding that the Bay Area pay for the higher cost.
Area Democrats insist that it is the state’s responsibility to pay for state roads and bridges. When catastrophe strikes, the state should pay the freight for fixing the damages. They are right.
But Schwarzenegger is right to insist that locals pay for the costs incurred thanks to their very own elected officials.
Schwarzenegger also pushed for an audit that explains how the costs skyrocketed. To the extent the cost overruns are the doing of Caltrans, state taxpayers should be stuck with the tab. But the Bay Area can pay for its costly dithering.
Today, state pols will be haggling over who pays for the Bay Bridge’s big price tag. Senate President Pro Tem To Be Don Perata wants Schwarzenegger to agree to allow bids to go forward and work out who pays for it later. No matter who pays, it is vital that the Legislature pass a bill forthwith, and make that a bill that will be signed, or the construction that already has begun on the bridge could be stalled for another two years. Area voters don’t seem to mind that they have to drive over an unsafe bridge to go to work — but if there’s another quake, they won’t have trouble figuring out whom to blame.
And what is Perata protecting? He has bristled at the governor’s suggestion that voters be allowed to vote to funnel the recent $1 toll increase — the new toll is $3 — into the bridge construction rather than the projects for which it was earmarked. Building a safe bridge hasn’t been a top priority, but protecting transit projects somehow is.
As a result of these priorities, some Democrats are willing to push for a $5 toll. Bay Area commuters will be lucky if Schwarzenegger can negotiate a toll hike of only $4. So Bay Area commuters will pay dearly for the Oakland- inspired design, for Da Mayor’s delays and all the other political stunts that did nothing for safety.
Ever since Quentin Kopp was term-limited out of the state Senate, there has not been a single politician in the Bay Area who demanded the bridge be rebuilt safely and promptly. I won’t even address the issue of cost. Money, like safety, was no object for Bay Area politicians.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/08/27/EDG1O8EEGR1.DTL&type=printable